A Time to Mourn, a Time to Dance: Abortion Death Rituals in South Korea

Abstract

This essay explores contemporary ChonDoJe, Buddhist abortion death rituals in South Korea. I argue that both the fetus and the participants of the rituals can be conceptualized as biopolitical-spiritual subjects. This research uses participant observation, analysis of ritual texts, and a literature review of population control policies to situate the Buddhist abortion death rituals in the context of the colonial and post-colonial ‘modern’ reproductive regime in South Korea. The rites’ participants have contradictory and multifaceted identities in the transnational biopolitical reproductive regimes as they are constructed as both the targets of population control policies as well as the ‘sinners’ of abortion. I argue that the collective reenactments of past abortions in the rituals have unintentionally conjured those ‘erased’ due to robust population control.